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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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018 597 617 8 



PS 1919 

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A POLITICAL SATIRE. 



/ 
EDWIN HENNINGER, 

26 Aberdeen Street, 

CHICAGO. 



CHICAGO: 

PRESS OF LIBBY & SHERWOOD PRINTING CO. 

1898. 



^ 



2092 



COPYRIGHT, 1897, 

BY 

EDWIN HENNINGER. 



THE LAST HORSE OF THE CENTURY 



^^ 



1 

y " For I must speak what wisdom would conceal, 



•^ 



n~^ ^ And truths, invidious to the great, reveal." 



■Pope's ''Homer;' Book I. 



Ye immortal lampooners ! what task has been thine 

Since Folly usurped Reason's claudian line ! 

The scourger of vices the law cannot bruise, 

When idiots swarm, reformation refuse. 

O Juvenal ! master of satire's keen thong, 

Could s't thou live in these days as the days of thy song ! 

What kindled thy genius and startled the ear, 

Unchecked and unchastised is rioting here. 

Or Dry den, whose strong, unconditional verse, 

Exposed with a merciless cantering curse, 

A thousand odd bubbles to prick and show men 

The springs of pure glory unsullied again. 

Columbia ! nothing can equal thy seat, 

The traveller's theme and the exile's retreat ; 

The foe to oppression, the mother of man, 

Erected on Heaven's original plan. 

Whose ships should be welcome in every clime. 

The defender of right and no boodler in crime ; 

Upholding an honest, invincible rod, 

The virtue of man and the glory of God. 

Here Science and Art found a royal abode, 

The Muse waved her wing, with virility glowed ; 

War marshaled her legions, and Victory wore 

The crown her descendants, disdaining, deplore. 



A petticoat nation, why should we forbear, 

A braggart in peace and a dotard in war ? 

The future a nobler resentment should breathe 

Than those who now burnish the weapon and sheathe. 

Though nursed in the genial influence of peace, 

All prospects must wither, reproachfully cease, 

If laws that are robberies serve to elect 

A "jelly-fish" creature — a perfect defect. 

No justice and worth for ambition atone, 

Nor signalize dunces to senators grown. 

And when serving the nation by methods obscure, 

Need rhetoric squabble, need language be pure ? 

Extending our arms to the isles of the west. 
Must political paupers confirm and attest? 
Thus Rome when she reckless Equality gave, 
Found her magic name gone — a Liburnian slave ! 
If things prove as rotten and shameless as here. 
From such gordian knots let the pilots keep clear. 
But pause not ! our natural energies must 
Be exerted beyond us or crumble in dust. 
The world is a prey to the forces within — 
The weak to the strong, and the strong yield to sin. 
But when Freedom can lift and ennoble a race. 
Only beasts will submit and ask monarchs for grace. 

Undeniably noble, exceedingly droll, 

They rescue extortion from many a hole ; 

Build wanton additions where lobbies convene, 

Then vent on the whiskered reformers their spleen. 

The usual farce of curtailment is played. 

The prelude to many a notable raid ; 

In which trivial cobblers, more blockheads engage 

Than ever have graced a satirical page. 

Remorseless freebooters they gallantly stand, 

A terror to Honesty's tempering hand ; 

Excelled in no baseness the venal applaud, 

Lubricated by sham, dedicated to fraud. 

Oh ! where has insulted Integrity flown, 

A goddess w^hom all were delighted to own ? 

If such is the case let it never be said 

We were living when Dullness had sworn we were dead. 



The rallying cry of a nation is gone, 

When poverty wakes with the earliest dawn ; 

Oh ! blessed is the land that has drank from the spring. 

Where fealty blooms and its glories yet cling ! 

A curse on the traitor who breathes to bring low 

The land of his birth to humiliate woe ; 

Who feels not, who knows not, the hearts that will break, 

To cunse him forever, for man's and God's sake. 

Degradation will come and in purple be clad, 

Swept onward and stung by Caligula's gad ; 

When Olympus has nothing but what is defiled, 

Which satire has justly exposed and reviled. 

Idolatry's smile was more vile than the sneer 

Of a pagan's or sophist's insensible jeer ; 

Bat replace at all corners, replace gods of old. 

And all will kneel down — if constructed of gold ! 

For this they commit the most shocking offense. 

The most devilish deed on a sullen pretense ; 

Whose terrible itch God nor man can assuage, 

Devouring dishonored unscrupulous Gage. 

What matters it if there is virtue in praise, 

'Tis never observed or desired in these days. 

Now mammas go wild o'er a duke's pumiced face, 

Devoid of all charms but Hypocrisy's grace ; 

" What booteth a pedigree ? " — nothing he feared 

Who said it but now he had flattered, not sneered 

If one of those simpering creatures would smile. 

And ask if his pedigree shortened a mile. 

Society queens, with a holy accord, 

Whose only desire is to marry a lord, 

Breed more heinous licentiousness, vermin, in time, 

Than lionized murderers, bathing in crime. 

Ye solons ! exclude not the strangers who come. 

With no glib oily tongue, an expedient sum ; 

Who build i!p the nation and give it a glow, 

That ages can only bequeath and bestow. 



Exposures are courted, no villian will shrink, 
All righted by giving the jury a wink ; 
No ghosts will embitter, no conscience will make 
Existence the shadow of hell's burning lake. 
Time was, ere old Guttenberg hallowed his pages, 
To travel the orbit of vice took ten ages ; 
A stocial effort — we leaped at a bound, 
Strewing infamy over virginity's ground. 
The judges cry, Ha! at the calendars crammed. 
Newspapers are venal, the prisons are jammed ; 
And even the holy St. Matthews of earth, 
Give food for reflection and matter for mirth. 
Here poverty wrangles, here sordid lust rules, 
More follies than ever were welcomed by fools, 
Who spread the full sail to obscenity's breeze. 
Growing hoary in roving sin's fathomless seas. 
A few may consider the laws they transgress, 
But nothing must hamper our monied noblesse. 
Religion may lend them her halo awhile. 
But vice will live on and inhabit the pile. 
Will guiltiness fix on the libertine brow 
Ingenuous freedom, or what it is now? 
In vain ! see his soul rive the regions below, 
Inebriate, knowing nor gladness nor woe. 
So long as the Trilbys grow flabby and pale, 
So long as the yellow back novels have sale. 
So long will depravity cancer the soul, 
Unbounded, o'erwhelming reform and control. 
Thus Rome from the pinnacle fell to the pit, 
Nor boasted one grain of Caesarian wit ; 
A body of lolling patricians whose gold 
Could find no Horatius commanding and bold. 
Demoralized, sated with riches and w^ar, 
Their gorgeous trophies still spotted with gore, 
A palace and fen for a cottage and yard. 
Obesity's lethargy! Heaven's reward! 



Want hurries us on in the vortex of gain, 
A few — precious few! in their senses remain. 
No margins allure, speculations entice, 
Undoomed to throw suicide's ruinous dice. 
Here Fufidius buys one cheap breeches a year, 
And trades off the old one with many a tear. 
The pennies thus saved are invested in stocks. 
And vainly his house, maid in vain sighs for frocks ! 
Here PoUio supports a continuous dance, 
So long as his credit can keep in advance ; 
Recruiting his fortune by cutting the scale 
Of his helots, who strike, but can never prevail. 
A charity bawd that would sicken the men 
Whose practices never promoted a fen ; 
Who strove to wean man from traipsiacal's lust. 
To repose on the soil and to hallow their trust. 
To day we are buried in fashion's new frills. 
That run in all papers like spring's rippling rills. 
To dazzle a moment, then flung in the rear 
By avenue belles with a nauseous sneer. 
lyCt brownstones the regime of Adam restore. 
And asylums would never reopen the door; 
Society's hopeless, could hope for a cure, 
And life be no mockery, God-like, and pure. 

lyCt Belknap be heard and then fly from the court. 

All ye who to petty transactions resort. 

Or Stanford, who grappled his vice by the hilt, 

Courageously rearing those steeples of guilt! 

A plank was inserted, denouncing combines. 

In Macaulay's full-blooded rhetorical lines ; 

Now, nothing is said, having mastered the trade. 

Malevolent wretches, they meanly betrayed. 

Thus pretentions the reason will stifle and blind. 

And shackle with falsity doting mankind ; 

Thus fetters are clinched to the scorpioned yoke. 

Which Marats, with vengeance, have shattered and broke. 



■7- 



Unprotected, exposed, to the maddening crowd, 
Gorgonic, malicious, penurious, proud. 
Each applicant nursing a fiendish Guiteau, 
Must the president fiddle-stick candies bestow? 
Far better on Comus or Ceres rely, 
Disgruntled to live and in poverty die. 
A wretch, fearing neither the prison or knife, 
Stigmatizing with curses the chapters of life ; 
Must Sense such debaucheries boldly display. 
And tolerate that which has blasted the day ? 
Let Honor to Merit all favors consign. 
The service reform and its morals refine. 
Recanting at last, as at first they defied. 
Traducing all measures, and blackly belied, 
Still galling, they reck with Samsonian main, 
To break the restrictions, carousing again. 

Once more has McKinley been foisted on high ; 

Egeria frightened, abandons the sky. 

The deep adamantine foundations of sense 

Are shattered by shocks that preclude all defence. 

When Congress surrounds us with thundering storms. 

When Rumor 's hysteric, and Mars is in arms, 

His message so calm, all-considering wise, 

Confucius and Rousseau shall start in surprise ; 

So just in conclusions, electrical force, 

On par with its own irreparable source, 

In columns shall sicken, then wander unread, 

A pale, sallow ghost in the realms of the dead ! 

Not thus the great leaders whose planets still shine. 
With nobility's sentiment marking each line. 
Expanding the mind nor confining the soul, 
The grace of their age and achievement's dim goal. 
Who pointed the path which posterity trods. 
Who lived in their day no inanimate clods, 
Whom vandals could reverence, feeling their dearth, 
But viewing our giants, exploded with mirth. 



ttail Harmony ! from thy etherial place 

Thou flittest to earth to ennoble the race ; 

Reforming their ranks, a Suwarrow divine, 

'Till it burns to revenge, an unflinching combine. 

All factions unite with intuitive zeal, 

No fiction about it— all thoroughly real ; 

From Klondyke's gold rivers to shelvy Key West 

Thy magical name is still blessing and blessed. 

If fortune should frown and relentless abuse. 

Their oracles choke on a bottle of blues, 

Gladstonian statesmen go whirling to Nod, 

No victory ours — 'tis the mandate of God ! 

The Hudson smiles back reassured by Depew, 

As if he were pulling his own hairy cue ; 

And over the combat sweet Harmony flies, 

Her cheeks white as sheets and big tears in her eyes. 

"O never lose courage— my genius has crushed 

Opposition to atoms and rarefied dust ; 

Verbosity triumphs and arguments yield 

When girding my loins I fly to the field, 

Now stretching all champions low^ on the earth, 

Repose on corruption— exhibit your worth ; 

Who fears when I blubber exulting in arms 

Has fell a base scullion to Uberty's charms." 

O Subsidy ! thou who hast swindled for gain 

Must flutter on Creole's predestinate cane ? 

Away with this bounty though hungry farms sigh, 

Their natural harvests let islands supply. 

Not in this but in all things they glory in waste, 

A ravenous glutton, discolored, defaced. 

Who can question such anxious redoubtable zeal ? 

Protection indeed ! — or a marvelous, steal ? 

Progression with eagle discernment surveys 

The past and the present, improving our ways, 

Discarding irrelevant roles to assume 

The nobler advancement— to aid and illume. 

But extravagance lingers, a demon, to blast, 

Of enormous proportions, a dwarf in the past, 

A Gulliver, greedy of stomach and hand, 

Reducing to ashes the generous land. 

-9— 



Kxploiting this sport, and unfolding this dame, 
Newspapers now feed the lascivious flame, 
Unearthing the dung of the famous depraved, 
All relics are treasured, all terrors are braved ; 
Here articles skip, nude celebrities dance, 
And virtue's a dupe to the wonderful trance ; 
Fame flits o'er the surface, obscurity crawls, 
Monstrosity gibbers, a calf-joker bawls. 
But this is mere trifling compared to the sheet 
Where republicans rivet their doom of defeat ; — 
That mass of mean nothing assertions and facts. 
Gone through with in several melodrame acts. 

Since Nature conceived, since creation began, 

The vilest of animals living is man. 

And wherever the race has concentered or trod. 

It substitutes self and then deprecates God ; 

Or worships an arrant political boss. 

Resigning the ballot, nor deem it much loss ;• 

A notorious fact that is never denied, 

A stigma on freedom, a blackej^e on pride. 

Abhoring oppression they sanction the wrong. 

Delusively wove in the national song. 

Oh ! what have republican principles gave ? — 

To the homicide censure, a rope to his slave ! 

What matters it if in one ludicrous line 

A thousand Childe Harolds fly over the brine ? 

In London and Paris to gamble their fill. 

To return and examine each itemized bill ? 

Herodotus laughs ! sure, 'tis pleasure to gawk 

Where peddlers their curios snuffle and hawk ! 

On, on ! to the gang-board — let nature not view 

Beneath her own skies such degenerates in you ! 

Let McKinley's commission clutch laurels of fame, 

Demented, purile, unworthy its name ; 

And snubbed at the Courts of the Lily and Lion 

Return to chant hymns on their holy Mount Zion. 

Lilliputian giant transplanted on earth, 

Hast any idea of natural worth ? 

Artificial in all thou art doomed beyond hope. 

Unable with anything nobly to cope. 



Astrea's returning to visit the plain, 

In petticoat bloomers — a joy to the swain 

As if her departure, which heaven must weep, 

Was done in the night when the guards were asleep. 

Instead of resuming her ancient abode, 

Or framing anew a Solonian code, 

She pours inspiration in Maria's heart, 

And yields to her judgment all science and art. 

No longer hymeneal kisses await. 

High prancing amid the resounding debate ; 

And when Hymen has pierced your electrotyped breast, 

A withered old hag, why, the world will detest. 

No warning can alter — no point she'll concede, 

So off to the ballot — be sure you can read ! 

Thus the Rubicon's crossed and poor Maria's on 

In search of an office or legacied son. 

A spirit of terrors she flies to the fray 

In armor that flashes intolerable day ; 

Hurls argument down from its desolate throne 

And mounts but sits not on the broad rugged stone ! 

Where Congressmen held undisputable ground, 

Bid the clarion blow and the orchestra sound, 

They limp, a despairing unfortunate band. 

Once the Hectors of manhood, the pride of the land ! 

Behold the third Joan destroying descends. 

And fiery eyes on the trembling world bends ; 

Strews mangled republicans over the field. 

Intrepid, ferocious, to nothing will yield. 

The audience quake as the whirlwinds arise. 

The distant hills echo and shout to the skies ; 

The skies bear it on to the confines of hell. 

And ghosts fly for life at the terrible yell. 

Though common sense begs for a little respite, 

The amazon flutters, continues the fight. 

And rattling among all her idiot phrases 

The phoenix expires in the furious blazes. 

O cease, mighty woman, your foolish tirade. 

Thou garrulous witch, emulating JackCade; 

Prim metaphors hustle in traveling bags. 

Apostrophes tie to Mazeppa-like nags; 

Exchange all thy similies, madam, for shoes, 

Then wear out the suffering world, if you choose. 



Can patriotism in bosoms like these, 
Spasmodic and spavined, a fulsome disease 
Be depended to burn through adversity's hour, 
With no warranty deed of a government dower ? 
Ah, no ! she would waken the flame in a heart 
Earth warms and expands, no unnatural wart ; 
Whose soul does not waver 'twixt Mammon and Life, 
Nor conscience disturbs plunging on in the strife. 
On honied ribaldry they proudly rely, 
Far blacker themselves than the dissolute lie ; 
A living example of those who have been 
A curse to their country, assassins of men. 

We yield to the ancients arts delicate skill, 

The culture and fire Admiration loves still, 

Ere avarice itched and corrupted the strong, 

By luxury led nor admonished by wrong. 

Unscathed shall these hypocrites laugh at the lash, 

A mole hill of sense and a mountain of trash ; 

All criminal nullificators whose gall 

Is got from the place where it oozes from all ? 

No argument, statement, or sentence appears, 

But it stretches like Baalam's prophetical ears; 

By degrees to depravity sinking at last, 

Forgetting they ever were prudent or chaste. 

Art ! Poesy ! mania visions resign. 

What hardships ! imperfect injustice is thine ! 

Go imitate Swift ! — let your energies turn 

From virtue's attainment — to falsehood and burn ! 

If deficient in noble expression and thought, 

Toil on undiscouraged — the sooner 'tis bought! 

Few sprung from the broken Catonian die. 

And the summit of life is to roorbach a lie, 

The prince of mendacity skims o'er the lines. 

Their brilliancy envies, his dullness repines, 

His eyes roll in agony, life is in vain — 

Demented he shrieks and then grovels insane. 

A crucified language, a desolate state, 

Turns gratitude into a livid ingrate, 

On Lincoln's colossus, which Heaven adorns, 

Truth hangs up her harp, and immutable, mourns. 



He cannot, he will not confirm or declare 
Belligerent rights, since there's plenty of air. 
Thus Cuba must wither, exhausted, away, 
To curse as they see thee obscuring the day. 
The slaver of millions who never before 
Have deemed ye a set of old brags to the core. 
Thou swindler in lives, by all patriots despised, 
Thy archtype Satan, rejoicing, devised. 
Go send out your cutters and scuttle the seas. 
This patriot stop, this hermaphrodite seize! 
Then smile at the throne of the monster restored. 
Inanimate, drivelling, detested, abhored! 
IvOok down on the isle that is struggling for life. 
Where furies convulse and embitter the strife, 
Where famine mocks all with the air of a brute, 
Then asks if thy conscience, thy soul can be mute. 
Of all who have strangled Spain's barbarous reign, 
And blossom anew, must the fairest remain ? 
A garden transformed to a lyybian waste, 
Where happiness dwelt, mutilated, defaced ? 
The blood that is flowing from many a breast. 
Should spur thee to action, or make thee a jest ; 
One of nature's deformed with a Calaban brand, 
A traitor to Cuba and false to this land. 

Democracy triumphs and with it brings peace. 

Or invidious faction, the ruin of Greece. 

Though bright was their glory and intellects shone, 

The invaders repulsed, fell a pray to their own. 

One moment their records unparallelled scan. 

Then forget half the deeds that humiliate man ; 

The deeds that have rung through the silvering years 

No mention now claim and no mortal reveres. 

But men will be ruled by a Stygian rod, 

When unworthy the past, lightly spurning the sod 

That nourished nor pampered the warriors who gave 

To principles life, and a glorious grave. 



—13— 



'fhe present abjure and the future resign, 

Ye statesmen! strive not — get digestion and dine ! 

Since Congress has rivaled comedian schools, 

Like Sly, ye are turning theatrical fools. 

Here Humor and Wit, consecrated, allied, 

Laugh out of existence conservative pride, 

As uproarious jibes, paroxysmal applause, 

The diaphragm strain, dislocating the jaws. 

Each page in amazement stares wildly about. 

And asks of his mate what new gag has come out ! 

The tumult increases — the lexicons fly — 

The sergeant arises to conquer or die. 

As when from a mountain the torrent pours down, 

Leaps over the fields and submerges the town. 

Some take to the boats, some the houses bestride, 

Borne far on the surging and deafening tide ; — 

But here they are doomed — all the galleries moan. 

Beseeching for life and tumultuous grown ; 

Run forward bewildered but clogged the retreat, 

Thy rhetoric bubbles and boils in the street. 

Or Inaction, a coward, unable to dare, 

Mortifies the assembly, infecting the air. 

An infamy worse than the wretches whose bull 

Made Greece bow submissive to mocking Abdul. 

Oh ! who would not shun these incompetent knaves 

To mourn o'er the past and to honor its graves ! 

Perhaps to receive from their spirits a spark 

Immortality strikes to illumine the dark. 

Go look on the statues — the monuments Time 

Has erected for Glory in every clime, 

x\nd figure how long generations will pass. 

Ere on that same spot feeds an ownerless ass. 

Blot out all the speeches ye grandly indite, 

Bid farewell to straddling and champion the right. 

By supporting the Spaniard, denouncing the Turk, 

What palms would have fallen to Chatham or Burke ? 

No longer the spirit of genius is seen 

To sport near the fountains, the capitol's green ; 

Her cabin demolished, nativity's home, 

She loathes to return to yon Titian dome. 



A mania nothing has ever controlled, 

What fools for an office have squandered their gold ! 

Ambition attained in the channels of trade, 

Thus politics strip them, its methods degrade. 

Full many a senator, toil worn and old. 

In Washington's wilderness, foster and mould 

The course of events, unconsidered, unknown 

Where Peffer's brass trumpets have twisted and blown, 

The guerdon's an empty kaleidoscope glare. 

To end with neglect and financial despair ; 

All posts and statesmen an equal grave find, 

An obsolete name for the index behind. 

O Hermes ! thou god of the platform and box, 
Thou tutor of Socrates, Cicero, Fox, 
Thy fav^oring similes unreservedly shed. 
Alike on the living if not on the dead. 
Here Persius leaps the political list, 
And pummels his foe with venality's fist. 
Now praising some candidate's glorious fame, 
Or sounding his own and supporting the claim. 
Each sentence so mean and immortally dull 
Refutes being born or conceived in a skull. 
As arguments stumble and metaphors dread 
The hyperboles blurting and blowing ahead. 
It takes all the medical Druids produce. 
To lighten the throes of such awful abuse, 
When eloquence cannot benignantly soar, 
But grovels along and lickspittles the floor. 
Roll on thou unmeasured and darkening tide 
Of human affairs 'till it drenches their hide, 
'Till it drips from some Gibbon's illustrious pen 
Refined by their absence and honored by men. 



—15- 



Believe all the stories that Mandeville told ; 
Believe in Mohammed, that new wine is old ; 
Believe in a woman, time polished or raw, 
But place no reliance in sectional law; 
No sedulous promises curtly arrayed 
By those who the present conditions have made, 
Or political justice, subverted, undone, 
Makes every ballot a vile vulgar pun. 
Obscurity's village a Cromwell may boast 
But where has a Cromwell been given a toast? 
No law can detain thee — thy fate who can tell ? 
Ye pass desolation and gallop in hell ! 

Homeopathist Dingley (God save him ! ) appears 
With quackery decking — defiling his years. 
And with him aged Cannon can honestly claim 
The wreaths that encircle Debaucher3^'s name. 
In revenue buried — may this be the news 
Correspondents enravish — a theme for the muse ; 
A deluge that carries prosperity's bark 
More wondrous than Noah's diluvial ark. 
Round Captain M'Kinley and Commodore Ding 
The Nereids rise in a circle and sing ; 
Evtravagance laughs with a filial glee. 
And pension bills flutter on charity's sea. 

Republican congresses gave without law, 

Or any attempt to discover a flaw, 

By myriads, pensions, which patriot men 

Should give an immediate revision again ; 

A paltry and yet a most needed reward, 

To those who have never degraded the sword. 

A noble allowance to various sheep 

Who have prospered and gloat o'er a glittering heap ! 

The systems a hoax — the requirements too loose. 

All open to grave and enormous abuse. 

Corruption corrupting has wandered amiss — 

Thank Heaven ! a miracle's surely is this! 

Let M'Kinley sign on all the recreant bills, 

That steam from hot diet, society ills ; 

Take Cleveland's example — no Babylon build : 

What ever is rotten 'tis folly to gild ! 

-i6 - 



Oh ! rarely we find in these scandaHzed days 
A judge that is worthy an honest man's praise ; 
Corrupt and licentious, the minions of greed, 
A few may correct, but the mass loathe no deed. 
The bench has been laden with folly ere now, 
And Nessus bands galled the incapable brow ; 
But no parallel history's reams can afford 
Coincident even when Jeffry was lord. 
The out laws of justice, for justice too mean 
In commodious lodges are lauded and seen ; 
But vagrants must lie in the \'ermin below 
For twenty long years with no feeling but woe. 
Already we give to incorrigible I^ynch 
The power that never has failed to convince, 
To rectify petty transgressions and rape. 
Which society pampers, breathes in, to escape, 
The ermine is stained when its feathers are fine, 
No longer 'tis sacred, no longer divine ; 
Jurisprudence must open its Clodius fist. 
Do penance for Banquo, or cease to exist. 
The past casts the future — the one w^ho has fed 
On the fat corporations bewitchingly shed 
Will jest as he poises the delicate scale, 
While hypocrisy dangles and screens with a veil. 

Ye urge the return of our maratime glory. 
Romantic as any Arabian story, 
Transcendent on every puddle and wave, 
But nothing disturbs its inglorious grave, 
A fond unsubstantial Athenian dream, 
A lesson in language, Utopian scheme, 
Each sea town a Venice repeopling the main 
With heroes delighting old ocean again. 
Ye call upon woman dramatic and warm. 
To rescue your bandits and cut throat reform ; 
The strumpets of lobbies — ah ! these ye implore 
To double their efforts as never before. 
What party has made such a foolish appeal 
As if their distress and affliction was real ? 
What records of wrong to thy annals of crime 
Can ye fondly expose vindicated by time ? 



O Cleveland ! debasement established thy power, 
"Innocuous desuetude's" ludicrous hour. 
Alone, unexcelled, that Brahminical phrase 
Shall follow the ages, supplanting thy bays. 
Maternal old Buffalo, Amsterdam, pooh ! 
And sanious Indianapolis, too ! 
A Strepsiades cased in belligerent boots, 
Unduly perfidious in honored disputes ! 

Intellectual bonfires with clamor may fill 
An indifferent universe, mostly with ill. 
But who'll be seduced when the radiant glow 
Of beacon's still glimner ray darting below ? 
Some people as moths are enchanted with glare, 
And when it subsides wander brainless in air. 
Or prejudice renders the intellect blind 
To all of the nobler endowments of mind. 
Oh ! never again will we rival the day 
Of a Hamilton, Jefferson, Lincoln or Clay, 
If M'Kinley and those in his cabinet shape 
American measures with nothing but tape. 

What degeneracy filters through every age, 
From Cain down to Sherman — a virulent rage ! 
lago-like delving, for many a prize 
Beelzebub's hideous demons despise. 
Not only in hovels where idiots stare 
Inhumanity's tigers assemble and glare. 
Since cushions of ease and luxurious rooms 
Have lured down to gory incarnative dooms. 
The dagger on which all assassins depend. 
Convulsing, has never accomplished its end ; 
A burning delirium never at rest 
Igniting the mass, spreading anarchy's pest. 
The slaves of less lawless ward-heelers who urge 
Them on 'till Atillas a piteous scourge, 
Which law unrelentless, redoubling the goad 
Should hurtle back yelping to Pluto's abode. 



-i8— 



Must Sherman retire from his honorable post 

A drivelling Nestor, stupidity's boast? 

Can present devotion his evil erase, 

Obliterate meanness, expunging disgrace ? 

O Sherman ! prepared for the mightiest fray. 

Why twirleth thy tail like a kitten at play ? 

Exulting whenever a blunder is made, 

To Hermes a friend, and to Thalia a maid ? 

What remarkable honors from Shylock shall shed 

Earth's splendors around thy diminutive head ! 

Those petrified laurels shall relics remain, 

Smithsonian wonders sought after in vain I 

Must Washington gather within her domain 

Such puissant lords from the city and plain, 

Debating on measures they never digest, 

To pass or reject them, convinced by a jest ? 

To bow to a brutal despotic czar, 

A lumberman, driving Carnality's car ; 

To cringe in the caucus controlled by his nod. 

As barbarians grovel and squint at a god ? 

As if he were the only edition *'de luxe," 

The rest being bastards or children of Puck's ? 

A bulwark of knaves, and their common defence 

A foe to religion, to liberty, sense. 

His sensual appetite vainly defies, 

But lo ! from his mouth flits the virtuous prize, 

Base parasites litter his pestilent gaze, 

Eternally damned by his odious praise ; — 

"Ye shades ! where is Pistol, where Bardolph, where Nym ? " 

" Incarnate, concentered, all breathing in him 1 " 

lyCt Hanna be feted, cajoled, and revered, 
In the nest hoary Sherman was Brutus-like reared, 
And the party's unanimous, body and mind, 
A brazen cartoon on the face of mankind. 
Oh ! who can believe what their Pythias say. 
When deeds, emanating from corporate sway. 
Rot even the shelves upon which they are stowed. 
Unfit for Commodus' reeking abode ? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





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